Sunday, April 27, 2014

LIBERALISM UNRELINQUISHED

A statement of no surrender on the word "liberal."

Statement:

In the 17th and 18th centuries there was an ascendant cultural outlook that may be termed the liberal outlook. It was best represented by the Scottish enlightenment, especially Adam Smith, and it flowed into a liberal era, which came to be represented politically by people like Richard Cobden, William Gladstone, and John Bright. The liberal outlook revolved around a number of central terms (in English-language discourse, the context of the semantic issue that concerns us).

Especially from 1880 there began an undoing of the meaning of the central terms, among them the word liberal. The tendency of the trends of the past 130 years has been toward the governmentalization of social affairs. The tendency exploded during the First World War, the Interwar Years, and the Second World War. After the Second World War the most extreme forms of governmentalization were pushed back and there have since been movements against the governmentalization trend. But by no means has the original liberal outlook been restored to its earlier cultural standing. The semantic catastrophes of the period 1880-1940 persist, and today, amidst the confusion of tongues, governmentalization continues to hold its ground and even creep forward. For the term liberal, in particular, it is especially in the United States and Canada that the term is used in ways to which we take exception.

We the undersigned affirm the original arc of liberalism, and the intention not to relinquish the term liberal to the trends, semantic and institutional, toward the governmentalization of social affairs.

Signatures:
Our goal is to gather at least 500 signatures (we hope even more wish to sign!). We have focused our efforts on people from Anglophonic countries because in most other countries “liberal” largely retains the original meaning.

I signed the petition because I broadly agree with its aims, though I have some reservations on details, which is to be expected among academics (any 5 economists in a room would have 5+ interpretations of economic theory and practical policies, etc.).

Almost all of the above disagree to some extent and intensity with my take on the use by Adam Smith of the “invisible hand” metaphor, as readers of Lost Legacy may have noticed; I have sometimes profound differences with others on aspects of their thinking, but not so profound as to withhold my signature. I interpret such thinking on my part as well within the ambit of the word “liberalism”, which is not a dogma, nor an ideological stance. My own stance on ‘Liberalism’ in today’s society can be summed as: ‘markets where possible; state where necessary’.

Readers of Lost Legacy who are broadly sympathetic to the project to clarify and re-instate the English language meaning of ‘Liberalism’ may contact the sponsors at: http://liberalismunrelinquished.net/

1 Comments:

The challenging part is determining where one is possible and the other necessary. It takes a sophisticated bunch to figure that out. The difficulty is that the goalposts are always moving, in this world that is always in flux and full of competing interests.